Monthly Archives: March 2016

He declined an invitation to go speak at the Jews Who Rule America, I mean AIPAC, Convention probably because the Likudniks there would grab him and drag him off the stage.

Bernie Sanders is a Jewish Cold War liberal. His foreign policy is about the same as what my father’s was. My father was also a Cold War liberal and a member of Americans for Democratic Action, a group made up of the left wing of the Democratic Party back in the 1940’s and 1950’s.

My father was great on domestic policy but terrible on foreign policy. Sanders is about the same. Keep in mind too that Sanders was Jewish. My father was as good as Jewish. He was a Judeophile who had all but converted in his mind. I was brought up with endless stories about how great Jews were from both of my parents who were each Judeophiles for much the same reasons.

I really could care less that Sanders is Jewish. So what! So he’s a Jew. So? Is there something wrong with that? Antisemites don’t get that there are good Jews and bad Jews.

Yes, a lot of Jews act like scumbags and spend most of their lives lying, cheating and stealing for a buck, for power or for the Hell of it.

Why they are so morally obtuse is not known, but it may have something to do with their primitive tribal religion, which is pretty nasty and amoral as far as religions go. A Jew who spends his whole life lying, cheating and stealing could very well still be a good Jew according to the Jewish religion as long as he did not lie to, cheat or steal from his fellow Jews. If he did these things to Gentiles, that is no great moral matter. In fact, it is of no concern whatsoever!

However, there is an other tendency in the modern version of the Jewish religion that has sprung up in the past 200 years. This is of tikkun olam, the duty of the Jews to be a guiding light to the Gentiles of the world, to lead the way for them towards making the world a better place. This is where all liberal and leftwing Jews are getting their ideology from. It is from this very liberal strain of Reform Judaism that Sanders gets his religious ideology.

However, Israel is the Achilles Heel of almost all US Jews. No matter how liberal or leftwing they are, they throw it all out the window when it comes to Israel. They have a total progressive blind spot when it comes to Israel. And so it is with Bernie Sanders, and it is here that the fact that he is a Jew is important. Nevertheless, he is the least pro-Israel candidate for President out there.

Here are the highlights, or rather lowlights, of his speech:

Support for regime change in Libya on grounds of removing a brutal dictator

Support for regime change in Iraq on grounds of removing a brutal dictator – I suppose this means support for the Iraq War, right?

Support for regime change in Syria on grounds of removing a brutal dictator.

Supporting for arming the Saudis to they can help us go into Syria to “fight ISIS.” Except when we give those guns to the Saudis, they will turn right around and give them to Al Qaeda, ISIS and the other idiots fighting to overthrow Assad.

Repeatedly states his support for “our good friends the Saudis” as being essential to “the war on ISIS.” Great, except for one thing. The Saudis are not fighting ISIS. The Saudis are the main support entity for ISIS.

Still committed to getting rid of Assad in Syria. First ewe need to take out ISIS (except our allies are supplying and supporting the group) then we need to force Assad out. So Sanders remains committed to regime change in Syria.

Support for the Saudis in their insane war against Yemen.

Support for “Israel’s right to defend itself.”

All parties must support Israel’s right to exist (as a racist, apartheid, ultranationalist National Socialist state).

All attacks on Israel are unacceptable! Why is that? Actually it is the other way around. I think all attacks on Israel are acceptable. They are getting what they deserve. When I read about Israel’s continuing activities in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, I think that if I were a Palestinian, I would grab a knife or jump in a vehicle and try to kill some of those Jews myself.

The ruling classes of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras leaves lower and middle income people few options but to leave

The ruling class is typically descended from the people of the European nation of Spain who are white or at least whiter than the native inhabitants of those countries. Hence, they are of higher IQs.

Do you believe higher IQ people rising to the top to become a ruling class is a good thing? I take it you are not a libertarian?

Yes, ruling classes exist all over the world. China, Iran, the Arab World, all of Europe including Norway, Sweden, Finland, etc. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have ruling classes. As do New Zealand and Australia.

The difference is that the ruling classes of Latin America are stone evil. Those are the most evil ruling classes on the face of the Earth. I am convinced that the only way to deal with them is simply to eliminate them altogether, to take them out. That’s what the Cubans did, and they did the right thing. They wiped the Cuban ruling class off the face of Earth. Yes, they went to Miami, where they are now the ruling class of Miami, but the ruling class of Cuba was simply exterminated. That’s the only way to deal with these monsters. You just need to flat out get rid of them.

I include the ruling classes of Haiti, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, and Paraguay in this category. However, the elites in Peru and Venezuela often ruled via fake “socialist” parties that were actually members of the Socialist International!

These people are just evil. They do not believe in democracy, much like our vile and despicable conservative ruling class. Whenever the Left comes into power, these ruling classes overthrow it in some way or another. They used to do it by military coup, and they still do (see Honduras) but now they have other methods (fake impeachment in Brazil and Paraguay, fake corruption scandal in Brazil, economic sabotage and street rioting in Venezuela and Brazil, fake claims of human rights abuses/dictatorship and assassinations in Venezuela).

So there is really no peaceful road to socialism (or even social democracy) in Latin America. Maybe Lenin was onto something with his talk of parliamentary cretins. The Leninists have always said that it would be nice if the Left could take power peacefully, but the ruling classes will not allow the Left to come to power peacefully because power does not give up without a fight. Therefore the ruling class has to be overthrown by force. I really do believe that they are correct. Look what happens when you try to do it peacefully: Allende, Chavez, Gaitan, Zelaya, Juan Bosch, Cheddi Jagan, Dilma Rouseff, Arbenz, Father Aristide. It doesn’t work.

I would put the ruling classes of Mexico and Costa Rica in a different category.

Mexico’s ruling class is actually part of a revolutionary party that is a member of the Socialist International. The reason Mexico did not have a Leftist revolution in the 1980’s was because, as my mother put it when I asked her why not, “They already had their revolution.” Mexico has long had great relations with Cuba and for the entirety of the war, the Marxist FMLN guerrillas of El Salvador had their head offices in Mexico City itself. They have national health care, free education to the university level and most of the rural land is owned by the state as “ejidos,” which are rented out for use by any peasants who wish to farm them.

However the elite did steal an election from a Left candidate in 1988, 25 years ago. The Mexican ruling class will only go so far with their shabby socialism.

The ruling class of Costa Rica for some reason made a class compromise and a social contract with the people sometime after WW2. They also decided to get rid of their military altogether. The fact that Costa Rica has historically been one of the Whitest countries in Latin America may have been one of the reasons that they were able to put in a social democracy. Reagan ordered them at gunpoint to destroy their social democracy in the 1980’s. I understand that they took much of it apart, but a lot of it still exists.

I have not heard a lot of bad things about the ruling classes of Panama, Belize, most of the Caribbean islands, the Guyanas and even Uruguay.

You might say that their first loyalty is to the 1%, and that loyalty “Trumps” (wink) any other loyalties that they may have to party, ideology, nation, faith, morals, allies, really anything.

In other words, the 1% is the 1%.

There is the “Democratic” 1% and the “Republican” 1%.

There is the “liberal” 1% and the “conservative” 1%.

But at the end of the day, they’re all just the 1%, and I assume that they are all holding hands with each other, going to same conferences, endorsing each other, plotting together, partying with one another, marrying each other, etc.

Marx would say that these people have one loyalty and one loyalty only: they are loyal to their class interests, and everything else be damned. Marx would be right. People don’t read him enough.

For example, Eric Holder watched the large banks steal trillions from the American people; his Department of Justice employees compiled at least 30 major lawsuits nailing the banks. Holder did not bring a single suit and destroyed all the evidence before he went back to officially working directly for the same banks he protected indirectly while in office.

I believe that all of this is completely true. Anyone else have any opinions on this statement? Is this the way it went down?

I do remember at the time that the FBI said that they were not going to prosecute anyone due to the scandal because there were just too many people to prosecute. The fraud was all encompassing and permeated the whole industry. The FBI stated that if they were going to go after everyone all of the criminals who broke the law leading to the market crash, they would have to put half of Wall Street in prison. Personally, I think that would be a great idea, but the FBI said it was just not doable.

That was one quip following the news that Nelson Rockefeller — New York’s four-term governor, former vice-president of the United States, and the most prominent scion of America’s most famous wealthy family — had succumbed to a heart attack at the age of 70, while in his midtown townhouse with his 25-year-old assistant, Megan Marshack.

Before there was Warren Buffett and his secretary, there was Rockefeller and his. Autres temps, autres mœurs.

The official story quickly broke down.

He had not been in his office working on a book about his art collection but in his townhouse.

He had not been with his security guard but with his security guard and his chauffeur. Okay, security guard, chauffeur, and a young blonde woman in a black evening gown.

He died instantly. Actually, he died one hour after he was stricken.

The blonde called 911, and that’s all she did. Well, first she called her friend, TV personality Ponchitta Pierce, and it was Pierce who called 911.

Where was Marshack? Out of town, replied the family spokesman, though when reporters had reached Marshack by phone a few hours after the death, she explained that she was with the family spokesman.

Eager for closure, the family allowed no autopsy and had the corpse cremated, hastily absolving everyone involved of any negligence or malfeasance — 4 Rockefeller Children Say All at Hand Did Their Best read the good-natured headline in the Times.

Wow, everybody lied. Everybody. Screw these “official stories.” I wonder how many other “official stories” like this there are.

As you now know,Obama has just gone to Cuba, the first US President to go there in many years. There is much to write about that visit including a wild run-up in rightwing outrage, especially over a photo taken of Obama with a painting of Che Guevara in the background.

One thing you will notice is that any article in the US or UK that discusses the Internet in Cuba will usually say that there is hardly any Internet in Cuba, that it is all restricted to the island and that hardly any Cubans have access to it anyway.

All reporting in the US and UK about Cuba is essentially propaganda, Cold War propaganda.

The war against Communism was one of the most serious wars that the capitalist class ever fought. If Communism won, everything they had, all their money, wealth assets and power, would be gone. The Communists and everyone and anyone associated with them, which in practice meant anyone on the Left at all, had to be defeated and not only that but destroyed. Anything was fair game in this fight to the death.

Mass propaganda was ubiquitous in the US during the Cold War because the capitalists thought that the threat of Communism was so great that all moral considerations had to go out the window and the ends justified the means. Yes, we say the ends justifies the means is immoral, but this is frankly the way that most humans operate. The ends justifies the means is the manner by which human life occurs and evolves, and it is just as present in modern civilization as it is in any primitive tribe.

“Anything to achieve our goal is ok,” is the human motto. In practice during the Cold War, this meant that an unbelievable amount of lying and distortion was allowed in coverage of the Cold War as long as it helped to defeat the Communists. This mass lying is still with us. No article about Cuba, North Korea, Belarus, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador or Argentina can be expected to tell anything near the truth.

The Cold War never ended because it was not just a war against the USSR. Even with no USSR, the Cold War had to go on. The Cold War needs to continue as long as there is socialism or a Left exists anywhere in the world. The Cold War was never really a war against the USSR. It was just sold to us that way. It was really a war against anything remotely leftwing from social liberalism through socialist all the way to Communism. The Cold War was 100% about economics and 0% about anything else.

By the Cavivache Media Team

The first things that come to mind are the lack of connection and its nonexistence when thinking of this equation. It’s true that a great number of Cubans have never connected to the Internet but in reality it is more nuanced then the (more often heard) statements that say, “there is no Internet in Cuba” or “people have no access to information in Cuba”. From informal networks to compilations that travel on flash drives, and a whole series of other alternatives, Cubans have known how to find solutions despite the economic difficulties and the inefficiencies of the institutions in charge of facilitating Internet connections.

In 2014, according to Cuba’s National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI), the country had 271 Internet users for every thousand inhabitants, close to 27% of the population. It’s not clear if this percentage includes the users that are connected to the series of national networks that don’t have access to content beyond the .cu domain. The government gives these accounts to doctors, cultural workers and other professionals in diverse sectors. For years, outsmarting the proxies of these local networks became normal to users and there were even moments when there breaches and it was possible to navigate on the Internet.

In contrast to the previous data, other reports indicate that before the surge of navigation halls and Wi-Fi zones, connectivity to Internet on the island reached 5%, which is not a very trustworthy figure.

Regardless of the exactness of the previous data, on June 4, 2013, Cuba took a step towards a mayor access to Internet with the opening of 118 navigation halls in the country at the price of 4.50 CUC an hour (1 CUC is approximately worth 1.15 USD). Two years later on July 1, 2015, 35 Wi-Fi zones were inaugurated in different parts of the country, authorization was granted for Cuban users to connect to Wi-Fi from tourist centers, and the prices of connecting were brought down to 2.00 CUC an hour. All of these measures have helped considerably to increase the presence of Cubans on the Internet, despite not knowing too all of its capacities.

According to Mayra Arevich Marín, an engineer and president of Cuba’s Telecommunication’s Company (ETECSA) at the end of 2015 there were 339 navigation halls with 1,174 computers with which to connect. At the beginning of 2016, there were 65 public areas with Wi-Fi and they hoped to create the infrastructure to open 80 new public Wi-Fi hotspots. Arevich Marín declared that at an average, more the 150 thousand Cubans have access daily to the Internet through these means. She also added that by November 2015, there were 1.2 million Nauta e-mail accounts, an international e-mail service used on phones with data plans that serves as a useful variable because it does not require connecting to the internet.

In any case, the statistics of the number of users that connect using Wi-Fi will never be completely trustworthy since many people share their connection through their cellphones or using apps like Connectify that allow for several users to connect from a single account. It’s a service that is usually resold in Wi-Fi hotspots as the slowest of options, which most people don’t know is also, insecure, but is definitely cheaper.

Apart from this “pure Internet” several national platforms exist in Cuba that have been developed since the 1990s in order to organize and connect prioritized sectors for the country’s development. For example, more than forty thousand doctors connect from their homes to Infomed, a network dedicated to medicine, that is part of Cuba’s intranet that despite its problems makes quite a contribution to their field. Infomed has several services like e-mail, virtual libraries, download of ftp (file transfer protocol) archives, scientific blog platforms, and social participation groups. Overall it’s a community dedicated to medical scientific advancement.

Another web portal is Cubarte, which is focused on sharing cultural information and services by artists and cultural professionals. In 2013, there were eleven thousand accounts on this platform, that among its services, apart from e-mail service it also has websites, bulletins with news articles on culture and a calendar that is updated often and can work by text messages. Like Infomed, it is far from perfect but has been a useful tool, although it hasn’t been used to the fullest in the process of connecting and developing the cultural sector.

Tinkering with the Internet in Cuba

Many people use the IMO app to communicate with family and friends. Photo: Fernando Medina / Cachivache Media

When you visit parks, hotels and other public areas with Wi-Fi hotspots in Cuba, there is a recurring scene: people — many people — talking euphorically into the air, pointing a phone to their face and in the best of cases, connected to a pair of earphones. The cause of all this behavior is IMO, a free app for phones that is used to make video calls and that Cubans use to talk with family and friends abroad. There are no public statistics on the number of Cubans using IMO in our country but the usual scene we described gives an idea of its popularity.

María Isabel Domínguez García in her research on Cuban Youth: Challenges and Opportunities for Current Cuban Society, published in 2013 by the Group on Youth Studies and the Center for Psychological and Sociological Research, did a survey on information technology and communication in which young people in between the ages of 11 and 24 or 88,2% declared having used Facebook at some point.

A less conclusive data but that still demonstrates how familiar Cuban youth are with social media, is the number of likes on the pages of some of the main stars of international football. On a fan map published by Facebook, Cuba is the tenth country in giving likes to Lionel Messi, third for Iker Casillas, eighth for Andrés Iniesta, fourth for Gerard Piqué and twelfth among followers of David Villa. This doesn’t confirm that they are regular users, but does affirm the existence of at least a first contact between Cuban youth and the platform created by Mark Zuckerberg.

Google Trends offers more references to how Cubans use the Internet. For example, from 2011 to 2014, Univision’s reality show Belleza Latina was at the top of search hits for Cuba. The soap operas in season also had an important place as well as the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, The 2012 London Olympics and the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. In 2015, the year that navigating the web through the Wi-Fi hotspots exploded, the prize went to IMO, the video call app mentioned previously along with the login and exit pages for the Nauta accounts, which is another sign of the use of the Wi-Fi hotspots.

The Weekly Package

The informal consumption of audiovisuals has become common practice in Cuba. Photo: Fernando Medina / Cachivache Media

The Internet is not the only or even the most important source of information and connection for Cubans. In face of the impossibility of users to connect to the Internet, the development of new technologies in communications and information took a very particular path in Cuba in the field of entertainment. This phenomenon that was born in the era of Betamax and VHS tapes as an informal consumption of audiovisuals has been updated with the arrival of USB’s. In this world of informal consumers, the phenomenon known as the Weekly Package has become one of the most popular and best-structured variants in the country to combat the lack of connectivity.

Very succinctly, the Weekly Package is a compilation of information of 1 Terabyte that is regularly updated. Its distributors “emulate” the universe of content in the web, that just like on the Internet, you will find all types of materials: movies, shows, talent shows, TV series, soap operas from different countries, animated cartoons, YouTube videos, news, web pages that have been saved with national and international news. It comes with cellphone apps (iOS and Android), programs for different operating systems, videogames, documentaries (Cuban and foreign), programs from Cuban television, books, magazines, music, Cuban and foreign music videos, among other things.

The makeup of this content reproduces the usual patterns of diffusion in the entertainment industry: more than 60% of the products in the Weekly Package are from the US, with programs from the leading channels in the US like HBO, CNN, Cinemax, ESPN, Fox, ABC,CBS and Discovery. Despite its mimetic character in terms of cultural diversity, because of its wide scope the Weekly Package, has so many options that its ends up satisfying the needs of amusement for most people.

Access to this is quite simple. In its usual form, the whole terabyte of information cost 2 CUC, although in Havana, 70% of those surveyed for a thesis research project, declared never having paid for it at all. Prices fluctuate due to various factors, such as the distance that distributors must travel, how up to date the materials are, and how much information is bought since most people only have flash drives with capacities of in between 8 and 32 Gigabytes. They then select only the content they want to see.

According to numerous reports, the creation and distribution of the Weekly Package works through a nucleus of people who divide the tasks among themselves and take responsibility for getting the different materials generally downloaded from the Internet or captured through satellite antennas. Later a selection is made and the terabyte is prepared. These providers charge in between 100 and 400 CUC for their services every week. However there isn’t a single model, but several in which many people and music studios include their own content and change accordingly with their interests.

Many of the Weekly Package’s distributors are legally covered under a license for disc vendors, a general patent provided by the Cuban government to those distributing audiovisual materials. Despite being subject to copyright laws, its protection doesn’t seem to be a priority to the Island’s authorities.

According to different researchers, among the main motives for seeing the Weekly Package are the entertainment and the access to information. Even though Cuban television regularly shows movies from the US, many of which are blockbusters that have yet to come out on US channels, the Weekly Package is much faster to get and comes is higher definition. It also works as an offline version of Internet, where users select the materials they want and when they want to see them. A study from 2014 by the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television’s Center for Social Research revealed that less than 40% of people in Havana used the Weekly Package.

As of now, the Cuban government has created other alternatives such as The Backpack or the Educate Yourself, which try to offer alternative models of cultural consumption. Due to several issues that range from problems in the selection design to the presentation of the product itself, the result of these efforts have been a failure.

Mobile devices have become one of the main forms of digital consumption in Cuba. Photo: Fernando Medina / Cachivache Media

Other alternatives to being disconnected

Recently Cachivache Media wrote a piece about the Street Network (SNET), an informal and self-managed network that connects all the municipalities of Havana through wireless or by LAN. It extends itself from the municipalities of Bauta all the way to Cojimar (about 30 miles).

But SNET is not the only network of its kind in Cuba. Outside of Havana, many other municipalities also have informal and self-managed networks where alternative versions of social networks, game platforms, discussion forums, the usual ftp, as well as the Weekly Package and other diverse initiatives like specialized magazines and local information can be found.

Another option used by Cubans to talk and share content is Zapya. It’s an application that has become an offline space where people share contents of all sorts, especially applications that don’t have to be paid for. Zapya is also used to chat, a sort of social network where the user can decide to stay anonymous or not, share photos and talk about any theme. One of its most controversial uses has been its use for sexting and sexual hook-ups, which because of a lack of basic knowledge of cyber security, there have been cases of harassment and abuse.

The panorama just described is part of an increase in the last few years of a series of projects that focus on offering services and satisfying the need to take advantage of new technologies, adapted to the lack of connection on the Cuban scene. There are leading examples by Cuban entrepreneurs like Vistar and Play Off, magazines that are respectively dedicated to culture and sports. Suenacubano is a platform for sharing Cuban music and then there are mobile apps like ConoceCuba, a compilation of cultural interests, EcuMovil, a mobile version of the online Cuban encyclopedia Ecured. There is also AlaMesa, a restaurant guide and Ké hay pa’ hoy? Which is a cultural guide (these last two are available on Google Play).

Finally, are we connected or not?

Cuba has a sui generis reality where the lack of connection is not synonymous of the neither cultural nor informative isolation. Despite the scarce penetration of the internet, that keeps us isolated from important economic, scientific and cultural processes, Cubans have known how to find solutions in order to somehow stay connected to the world. Either through the Internet provided by the government or the different initiatives of several Cuban entrepreneurs, it has allowed for Cubans to stay in tune with what happens “abroad”.

As a result, the tastes of consumers on the Island aren’t very different from the rest of western culture. All the rumors, records and news from European football, whose games are shown frequently on Cuban TV, are lived with the same emotion as in any home on the Old Continent. In any cafeteria or taxi, the top hits from Billboard can be heard. Only five days after House of Cards 4th season came out on Netflix, it was already being shared on flash drives in Havana.

Yet there is much to be to done in making full use of the Internet’s tools and to domesticate or Cubanize this network of networks. In matters of culture and information, we have only a short delay, but just that. The idea of a blind and deaf Cuba, a sort of El Dorado that is waiting to be discovered and discovering of the world is very much far from reality.

Best friends Billary Clinton and Donald Trump get together with Republicrat Rudy Giuliani and Dempublican Mayor Bloomberg for a friendly game of golf.

They’re all the same. I keep telling you all that the whole elite is all the same. Both parties are run by and for the 1% or at least the top 10% of America. The rest of us lower 90% can go pound sand.

And there is the reason for the Trump-Sanders phenomenon right there. Anytime there is a severe crisis in capitalism or if wealth starts getting too maldistributed, you almost always see a militant red or socialist-Communist challenge from the Left. There’s Sanders.

And at the same time, you often get a militant brown or fascist challenge from the Right. There’s Trump.

And then you start getting street fighting between the Left and Right mobs as in prewar Germany or present day Thailand, or an armed Right and an armed Left killing each other with weaponry as in Latin America, India, Ukraine and the Philippines.

I think one reason humans refuse to learn from the past other than just being too dumb to make analogies is that the past is depressing. The lessons of the past are usually depressing ones. We are supposed to take some depressing truth from the past and apply it to the present. But people don’t want to do that because it’s depressing, we are genetically programmed to be a bit optimistic, and plus depression is no fun.

Everyone wants to think that this time it’s going to be different, that the rules of history have been overturned (the run-up to the Internet stock boom), or that history itself is now dead and there is no more history (the neoconservatives). Yes, humans are often blind, but that is because they choose to be. Being blind feels good. Opening your eyes is painful, like a mole thrust into the light. That shining sun of history is awful bright when you are used to having your eyes closed. It hurts to squint at it. Better close your eyes again, look at the pretty patterns and pretend they are real.

From Antiwar.com, a great site if you can get past the Libertarian bullshit ideology that permeates the entire site. In their defense though, I will acknowledge that in recent years, the site now has many leftwing and liberal commenters too. They seem to have moderated their views and are now willing to enter into an anti-intervention coalition made up of the Libertarian (and Trumpist) Right and the liberal-Left anti-interventionists and better yet anti-imperialists.

It’s a crazy coalition, but many coalitions are pretty nutty. Two winged movements representing two very different colored birds look at each other, find a small group of feathers that match and unite into one political avian species on that basis. As much as I hate Trump, he is correct when he says life itself is “the art of the deal.” If you can’t make deals in life, you will get nowhere. Even my own father, very much a hardline Cold War liberal ideologue something along Bernie Sanders lines, used to shrug his shoulders and say, “politics is the art of the possible.” I say let them flower. When it comes to coalitions that advance our cause, let a thousand coalitions bloom.

Israeli hawks prefer ISIS, Al Qaeda, and Hamas to Saddam, Assad, and Arafat, because the people of the West are less likely to be willing to co-exist with the former than the latter. Especially as terrorist attacks and refugee crises mount in the West, the rise and reign of the terrorists may finally overcome public opposition to troop commitment, and necessitate the Western invasion and permanent occupation of the Greater Middle East, followed, of course, by its perpetual exploitation by, among other Washington favorites, Israel and Israeli corporations.

The West may become a Global Israel, forever occupying, forever dispossessing, forever bombing, and forever insecure. And the Middle East may become a Global Palestine, forever occupied, forever dispossessed, forever bombed, and forever desperately violent. That is how war is realizing the Israelizing of the world.

Pretty interesting. All of the West will become “Global Israel,” forever occupying, dispossessing and bombing Arabs and in turn making itself forever insecure. The Arab World itself will become Global Palestine, forever occupied, dispossessed and bombed by the New Israel (the West) and in turn becoming itself desperately violent.

The first sentence in the quote is not really true though. Yes, Israel much prefers Hamas to the PLO because the PLO seems somewhat reasonable and foreigners might be inclined to work with them to try to force a deal on Israel. The one thing Israel does not want is a peace agreement. Instead of a peace agreement, the Israelis feel that they should just fight a war are against the Arabs forever or until the Arabs are finally defeated.

The latter were heads of very powerful states, and the former are simply transnational terrorist groups with no state behind them. Sure, ISIS has a state of sorts, but it cannot exist like Iraq and Syria did. For years, those two states lived in peace with the world, and no one was waging war on them. As long as ISIS exists, much of the world will be attacking it.

The Israelis fear states and semi-states. They do not fear isolated non-state terrorist groups. Hezbollah is now so heavily armed that it is more or less the armed forces of Lebanon, so this state within a state is an Israeli enemy. Israel does not fear Al Qaeda and ISIS because they think they can handle them. Whereas states like Syria, Iraq and Iran and de facto states like Hezbollah pose a real threat.